Month: December 2008

Defense May Boost Orbital Power Generation

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It looks like the military is seriously looking into developing orbital power stations in order to reduce the logistical tail for remote bases. (paid subscription required)

The theory here is that if a relatively cost effective power station can be developed, then things like remote forward bases in Afghanistan would not require regular resupply of fuel for generators, which are both expensive and vulnerable.

They are in the very early stages, but the notational concept appears to be a 5-10 MW pilot power plant in about 10 years.

If they can manage that, we might start seeing commercial applications in the decade following that.

Why Japan May Not Buy the JSF

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It is increasingly looking like it will be impossible for Japan to have their own final assembly site for the F-35 JSF. (paid subscription required)

Japan has been manufacturing front line fighters locally since 191956, when it started taking deliveries of the Japanese assembled F-86 Sabers, and while aircraft in service have been foreign designs (F-4EJ, F-15J), or derivatives of foreign designs (The F-2 derivative of the F-16), this is a capability that the Japanese government and military see as important (otherwise they would not have flushed all that money down the toilet on the F-2 in the 1990s).

In addition to the F-35, the competitors for Japan’s next fighter requirement are the improved F-15FX and the F/A-18E/F from Boeing, or the Typhoon from Eurofighter:

Japan’s F-X fighter competition results will determine next year whether the national industry can sustain its tradition of domestic production of fast jets or instead be forced to accept a suspension and the risk of losing skills.

….

One Japanese official who has recently moved from the Defense Ministry to industry says that his former colleagues are inclined toward the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning to fill the F-X fighter requirement, but industry is lobbying for the Boeing F-15FX or F/A-18E/F Super Hornet or the Eurofighter Typhoon.

Simply put, the F-35 already has too many hard and fast contracts on work share for there to be any realistic opportunity for Japanese industry to participate.

What’s more, though this article does not discuss this, the aircraft is very tightly integrated, and so it becomes very difficult to involve local industry in upgrades.

There is the possibility that Japan could go it’s own way,with either something like their ADT-X stealth demonstrator, but the expense here would be enormous, particularly since the manufacturer would be prohibited from exporting the aircraft by the Japanese constitution.

Brazil to Buy Hind Helos

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This actually makes a lot of sense for them.

They are dealing primarily with things like dope dealers and insurgents, and purchase of 12 Mi-35M attack helicopters gets them an aircraft that is competent in attack, but also has the ability to carry 8 troops or a 4 of litters in a medevac situation, and so are more flexible.

They are also likely a lot cheaper, than the competition, the Eurocopter Tiger, and the Agusta-Westland Mangusta.

Russia Unveils FCS Killer RPG

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The folks at Danger Room quote the Russian descriptions as an “Abrams Killer”, but the RPG-30 is really designed to defeat active protective systems and reactive armor, neither of which are currently used on the M-1, which they note.

It’s pretty simple in concept. The RPG-30 launches two projectiles, the main 105mm projectile, and a smaller decoy, which it launches a few milliseconds ahead of it.

It would serve as a decoy against active protection systems, which intercept incoming rounds, and with even a tiny warhead, and it looks to be about 30mm in diameter, so there is space for this, it could serve to pre-detonate reactive armor, allowing for better function of the main charge.

Neat technology, and another nail in the FCS manned ground vehicle concept of substituting technology for armor.

And The Arms Race Continues

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We now have reports that Russia is designing and building missiles with the direct goal of foiling US missile defense systems.

This was foreseeable, and it’s not hard.

The technology for decoys is basically the same as you see for the shiny silver aluminized Mylar balloons, and about 20 years ago, an SDI opponent noted that there was nothing to prevent an opposing power from putting its reentry vehicles in said decoys, making detection nigh impossible until it enters the upper reaches of the atmosphere.

Once it reaches the atmosphere, the use of MaRVs (maneuverable reentry vehicles) to evade interception can come into play, and that technology actually saw deployment with the Pershing II IRBMs in the 1980s.

The last line of the article reveals the folly here:

That month Russia and China proposed a new treaty banning the use of weapons in space, but the idea was rejected by the White House.

I’ll be so glad when grown ups start going to work at the White House.

As Strange as this Sounds, This Makes Me Feel Good

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So, we have two stories from Wall Street where it appears that the principals are just plain crooks.

It makes me feel good, because, unlike what people are saying about the rest of that lot, willful blindness in pursuit of an obscene payday is not grounds for some sort of criminal investigation, this is clearly criminal, and the people involved are likely to go to jail.

In a real way, it reflects far more poorly on me than it does on them.

First we have Bernard L. Madoff arrested for operating a Ponzi scheme that appears to exceed $50 billion dollars.

This guy is a big name, as he is, “a past chairman of the board of directors of the Nasdaq Stock Market as well as a member of the board of governors of the National Association of Securities Dealers,” which makes him a member of what could be described as the nobility of the financial system.

And then we have Mark Dryer, a high flying Wall Street lawyer accused of cheating his clients by selling false promissory notes, also arrested.

Some additional Schadenfreude comes from the fact that Henry Blodget, the smarmiest of the snake oil salesmen during the dotcom boom, got a haircut on this too.

Son of HOTOL

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When I was in college, I recall, reading about a British program called HOTOL (Horizontal Take-Off and Landing, click picture to be taken to a page on it) which was supposed to use a “liquid air” engine in order to more efficiently reach orbit.

A short description of the cycle was that it was fueled with LH2 and for much of the way up, it would use the cold liquid hydrogen to extract liquid oxygen out of the air.

It got canceled, or more accurately, when the program ended it was not taken to the next phase.

I kind of figured that technical issues, my guess at the time (which appears to be wrong) was getting the heat exchangers small enough and light enough.

The real problem appeared to be that the engine was heavy, and in an aft mounting configuration, maintaining the center of lift far enough aft compromised performance.

In any case, a company called Reaction Engines are having another go at the concept with the Skylon, (paid subscription required) , which uses the Sabre (Synergic Air-Breathing Engine).*

As is clear from the picture, they dealt with the CG issues by placing the heavy engines at the center of lift on the wing tips.

It’s supposed to function as an air-breather until it reaches 30km altitude and “around Mach 5”, and then function as a normal liquid fueled rocket the rest of the way up to orbit.

They are looking at testing a 9% scale precooler (left) in January on a test stand, using a RR Viper turbojet behind the cooler (left below)

There are two problems with Liquid Air Cycle Engines (LACE), hydrogen embrittlement of the heat exchanger, and condensation of water and CO2 on the heat exchanger, which will plug it up.

It solves these problems by not cooling the air to full liquid state, but instead having a high-pressure turbo compressor behind the air to liquefy it, and by using helium as an intermediate medium for the heat exchanger, along with an unspecified proprietary frost control technique. (bottom pic)

It’s a neat concept, but I’m dubious of any project that is not fully funded, or almost fully funded by government sources, and at this point, they are getting just a trickle from the British National Space Center and the the European Space Agency (ESA).

*Let me note here that the Brits come up with cool names.

Israel Tests Black Hawk Gunship

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It looks like Israel is looking at an armed variant of the UH-60 Black Hawk demonstrator.

From the photo, it appears that they would be carrying an chain gun and a targeting turret, along with a fair number of ATGWs, something on the order of 16 Hellfire class missles, though, given that this is an Israeli developed project, Rafael’s Spike, or some variant thereof, would likely be the actual weapon deployed.

It’s kind of a return to the old UH-1 gunships developed in Vietnam.

Very Angry Swedes

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The Norwegian decision to purchase the F-35 JSF should come as no surprise, but the folks at SAAB are hopping mad at the suggestion that the F-35 will be less expensive to own and operate.

This is not surprising. The Gripen, even the heaver Gripen NG, is half the weight of the JSF, and cost and operating costs vary pretty directly with size.

What appears to have happened is that the Norwegians compared the purchase price of the Gripen that included, “included initial training, initial spares and all mission planning and support systems,” to unit flyaway costs for the American fighter, and even then, the cost quoted is about $20 million a pop less than what is bandied about in the media.

Bill Sweetman, talking to his sources, suggests that the Norwegians were concerned about the cost to them if the Gripen turned out to be a market failure.

If only 100 or so were sold, and that is a real possibility, or worse, that SAAB is taken down by the financial crisis, than upgrades throughout its life cycle would be very expensive, while there will be thousands of JSF’s produced, as there are already thousands of JSF’s on order by around a dozen nations, and the program is backed by the “full faith and credit of the United States”.

Their strong language appears to be all about mollifying left wing parties in the government.

SAAB’s full rebuttal is here (PDF), here are their bullet points:

  • claims that Gripen does not meet the Norwegian air force’s demand rests on simulations containing incomplete or non-existent capacity information
  • the alleged life cycle cost does not rest on experience of the Gripen system but hasbeen calculated by applying own assumptions and models of calculations.
  • conditions underpinning the calculation are in parts radically altered and based on internal Norwegian assumptions.

Reports of Iran Buy of SA-20 Systems

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Needless to say, this is something that would concern any country that might be considering an air strike at their nuclear facilities.

The S-300 (SA-20) is a very capable system, with the S-400 (SA-21), which is apparently on offer for export, with no orders yet, even more so.

I ran the numbers on detection ranges about a year ago, using nothing but my basic understanding of physics, and the presence of either the S-300 or S-400 would concern me if I were doing mission planning.

X-47 UAV Program Expanded

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A few months back, it looked like that the Navy/Northrop-Grumman X-47 CUCAS-D (unmanned combat air system demonstration) was on the chopping block.

This is perhaps the most ambitious UAV currently in development, given that among other things, it’s supposed to make an arrested landing on a carrier deck.

It now appears that in addition to demonstrating combat capabilities and carrier ops, the program has been expanded to include autonomous air-to-air refueling, which will greatly improve the strike capability of the aircraft.

Autonomous refueling has been kind of a holy grail in the UAV community, and is really essential for any system that actually sees operational use.

Shipborne Rolling Vertical Landing Aid Demonstrated

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The folks at Quinetiq have demonstrated a landing aid for SRVL on the HMS Illustrious.

The idea behind shipborne rolling vertical landing is that an F-35 can return to deck in forward flight, with some of the lift coming from the wings, and some from the lift fan, which would allow for greater “bring” back in terms of weapons loads, and less wear and tear on the engine:

For the latest trial, a demonstration visual landing aid dubbed a “Bedford array” was installed in the port catwalk adjacent to Illustrious’s flight deck. Taking inputs from inertial references to stabilise against deck motions, this is combined with a ship-referenced velocity vector in a helmet-mounted display to enable a pilot to fly an accurate approach to the deck on a constant glidepath. A second lighting array was rigged on the carrier’s flight deck, and was used during a parallel evaluation of its visual acuity.

Me, I’m dubious.

The idea of making a rolling landing on an aircraft carrier with a 60,000 lb aircraft without an arrester hook seems to me to be a dicey proposition.

The Costs of Ending F-22 Production

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Well, it appears that there some significant costs to canceling the F-22 at just 4 more aircraft, (paid subscription required) instead of the full 20.

If the US government does not buy the remaining 16, Lockheed could be due $147 million in cancellation fees.

Let’s see….16 additional aircraft, costing somewhere between $138 million (Air Force figures) and $300 million (critics figure), instead of paying a penalty of $147 million.

If you canceled the program, and put garlic in its mouth, and a stake through its heart, and burnt it, and took half that money and bought advanced F-16s with EASA radar, like we are selling to…well, anyone who wants one…You could have 20 F-16s.

Get out the garlic, rosewood, and torches.